Always look on the bright side of life

Who said Innistrad is full of evil and dangerous creatures? Looks just like a bunch of friendly humans and angels to me!

We have got another weekend of results
with Shadows over Innistrad cards in the mix, before the Pro Tour
cements or shakes up the constitution of the new Standard format.
There were three Grand Prix this weekend, but they were all using the
Limited format, which will be relevant at the Pro Tour as well, but
doesn't affect the secondary market. Meanwhile on the other side of
the pond SCG held their quarterly Invitational, which isn't ideal for
our analytical purposes either due to being a mixed-format event,
consisting of 4 rounds of Standard and 4 rounds of Modern on day one,
with the same structure on day two again. The Top8 was played in
Standard, but the cut isn't necessarily showing the best Standard
decks, as the participants might have been more successful in Modern.
Looking at the 7-1 or better decklists of either format may be
misleading as well, at least without considering the total
performance of their respective players. It is much easier to go 7-1
in one format for a player who loses all the rounds in the other one, putting them on the bottom of the standings, giving them much easier pairings
over all. While you might have been excited about the Mono Red Aggro
or B/G Company lists that were able to go 7-1 or better, the small
grey numbers displaying their players' final standings (651st /
288th) should send you looking somewhere else quickly. Once you have
removed this noise in the data, the picture becomes quite clear. Not
much has changed since last week – White and Green still are the
dominant colours. The dust hasn't settled between the
aggressive Humans version with and without splashes and the midrange
“Big White” deck yet, but White and Bant Company (which technically could also
be called a white deck, but it has a green core splashing only a few
white cards) clearly seem to be pulling further ahead from the rest
of the field.

So the setting for players at the
upcoming Pro Tour is clear: Find a deck that wrecks white creature
decks and Collected Company decks. Solving this puzzle is also
interesting for investors, as buying the key cards of a secret Pro
Tour breakout deck before the Pro Tour is probably the fastest way to
turn a profit. I am not sure we can find such a deck, but these are
the boundary conditions to keep in mind:

Why are these decks so much better than
the rest?

These decks have very cost efficient
threats, most of which aren't just vanilla creatures, but have very
relevant triggered or activated abilities, still giving you great
options in the mid and late game. Declaration in Stone and
Dromoka's Command are among the best legal removal cards in the
format and at the same time those colours have historically never had
a problem to get rid of artifacts and enchantments.

Now that U/R Goggles is a known
quantity it is not a problem to have some amount of Angelic Purge,
or Naturalize, or Reclaiming Vines (which can destroy Westvale
Abbey as well), or Caustic Caterpillar (which can be found with
CoCo) in your sideboard, removing the one permanent that can actually
take over the game.

When you can't outclass their creatures
or their removal, that only leaves Planeswalkers and big game
changing spells as different angles to dominate the game. B/W
midrange can apply that plan successfully against a Mono white deck,
but against Bant Company (or white decks splashing blue) Dispel and
Negate from the sideboard not only mess up those plans, but also do
it ultra cost efficient, putting you further behind on tempo.

Planeswalkers are extremely weak in
general right now due to multiple flash creatures, and Collected Company threatening their loyalty even on a clear or stable board.
Control decks usually don't have a lot of blockers to put in front of
their Planeswalkers, and Reflector Mage removes a single blocker
for two turns, while Declaration in Stone excels at preventing a
token army from chump-blocking.

Winning with a few big creatures is not
easy against Declaration either. The best option control decks have
is probably Dragonlord Ojutai due to hexproof, which is a partially
white card as well (do you see a pattern there?). Linvala, the Preserver dies to removal, but that should be fine if you still get
a 3/3 flyer and 5 life out of the deal. The Pro Tour could push both
of these cards upwards, as there will definitely be control
enthusiasts bringing those cards. Ojutai rotates out of Standard in six months, so
the Pro Tour is your last chance to sell your copies before the
inevitable rotational decline, while Linvala could still be a decent
speculation target at the moment.

Red aggression with small creatures is
unlikely to be good in an environment dominated by cheap white and
green creatures either. Red has a lot of excellent sideboard cards
for the environment though (Rending Volley, Kozilek's Return,
Crumble to Dust), so maybe going a little bigger can be successful.
Michael Egolf reached 13th place in the Invitational with a 7-1
record in Standard with Mono-Red Eldrazi. Thought-Knot Seer and
Reality Smasher were broken in Modern due to the 2-mana lands, but they
are still great cards in Standard when cast on curve. I am sure
players are trying to build the best version of that deck in
preparation for the PT. If you missed your chance to sell some of
your copies during the Modern madness, the upcoming Pro Tour might be
your next best chance. Egolf had a single Goldnight Castigator in
the sideboard. If those angels would become a bigger part of the deck or
sideboard, this is one of the mythics capable of a nice Pro Tour
spike.

Will we just see more of the same on
the Pro Tour? Or which cards and decks can beat both Humans and Bant
Company?